1. Field
Apparatuses and methods consistent with exemplary embodiments relate to searching for an image, and more particularly, to searching for an original image of an image by using metadata or a characteristic value of the image.
2. Description of the Related Art
Due to developments in computers and communication technologies, there is an increasing demand for multimedia information services. Also, due to developments in information technology (IT) fields, the Internet, digital cameras, mobile phones, and the like, when compared to earlier forms of mass media, allow ordinary people that are not in professional groups to be able to quickly create a plurality of pieces of meaningful information. Thus, new communication forms are being created to allow ordinary people to share their own contents with other users.
Contents may be shared between users connected via a network in various ways, such as by web pages having bulletins, blogs, and webzines. In general, contents that are provided via a web page are transcoded or resized to have a form appropriate for the web page, and then are provided to other users via a network. For example, when a user provides a user-taken picture via a blog, the user reduces a size of the user-taken picture to obtain an edited picture and then provides the edited picture via the blog.
Contents shared between users are usually different from original contents since the contents are edited and converted according to needs of each user to share the contents. Thus, there is an inconvenience in that a user who wants to use the original contents may not easily use the original contents. Accordingly, there is an increasing demand for a technology by which a user may efficiently search for information having user-desired contents from among various types of multimedia contents including video, audio, voice, and still images, and may change the information to a user-desired form or may transmit the information.